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Hinari
Hinari (pronounced with a silent h) or Inariran as it's known natively, is an artlang based on the idea "what if the Romans colonised Japan?". How did the Romans get to Japan? What are the logistics? Easy. There is no 'new world' in this version of Earth and the Romans simply sailed west. You may be thinking: the Romans could barely conquer Britain, how could they conquer Japan? How did they travel so far? This is even 'more '''improbable than them colonising Brasil! Well, I tell you this in response: ''it just works. If it didn't work, there would be no conlang, and I want to make it. This "Japan" isn't really the Japan of our world, but rather a rough amalgamation of Korean + Japanese + Ainu + Siberian Tartar culture. Why though? Mostly because "Latin but with open codas and Japanese influence" would just look like a transcription of Latin into Japanese, and that's not very creative. I am taking quite a bit of artistic liberty with creating this language. The outside influences of the language will roughly look like this by the end: The 'other' is mostly Chinese, Greek, English and French. Classification Inariran is an agglutinative Japonic language spoken on several islands in the Sea of Japan. Despite originating in Japan, it has significant influences from Latin (sharing almost 60% of its vocabulary!), Korean, Chinese and (theorised) the Siberian Tartar and Ainu languages. It is believed that the language originated as a creole when the Romans conquered the islands in the 2nd century. Also known as Iamata ''in Latin, derived from the ancient name for Japan ''Yamatö ''or ''Yamatai, the language is written in three forms: Ratina ''(Latin alphabet), ''hanra (Hangeul), and yamana ''(Katakana). There are historical records of the Inari creating their own script from the Latin alphabet once connection was cut after its collapse, however, the script has fallen into obscurity since the feudal ages, in favour for Chinese characters (sonna) and the Latin alphabet in the modern age. Phonology Consonants Vowels "y" is represented orthographically with either <ü> or . "ø" is represented with either <ö> or . Some dialects have æ for the concurrent vowels a+e. Writers in these dialects may choose to use either ae or ä depending on personal preference. Allophones Aspirated obstruents become voiced intervocalically. /n/ -> /m/ and /w/ -> /β/ before a vowel. /ɾ/ -> /l/ word-initially. Vowels follow a special pattern depending on stress: Vowel Harmony Phonotactics C(j)V(N), where 'j' is a semivowel and 'N' is a nasal, like in Japanese. I know, boring, but this is the sound I am trying to go for: ''a weird Japanese/romance hybrid. Grammar Nouns Articles Articles decline by Gender and Case. They are the only remnants of Gender in Hinari, except for Demonstrative Pronouns, which decline similarly. Case There are eight cases in Hinari which are affected by the preceding consonant or vowel: * The © in brackets represents the preceding vowel assimilating with the consonant before it if both consonants are the same # Nominative – denotes the subject of a sentence # Accusative – denotes the direct object of a transitive verb: "I like cats." # Genitive – denotes posession: "This is my cat." # Dative – denotes the indirect object of a verb: "He gave me a car." # Locative – denotes the source of direction or place of an event: "I was born in a log cabin." # Instrumental – means 'with' in the sense of "by means of": "He writes with a pen." # Comitive – means "with" in the sense of "together with": "I'm going with Sonya to the mall." # Vocative – used when calling out to someone or something: "Hey, you!" Verbs (under construction) Syntax Hinari is a topic-prominent language, where the topic is marked with either -Vn or -nVn (depending on the preceding vowel/consonant). If you are unsure what exactly is the difference between the "topic" and "subject" of a sentence think about it like this: What comes after the topic is more important, while what comes before the subject is what is important. Compare the sentences "I am tall" and "I am the one that's tall". They both mean the same thing, but the emphasis is different. Adjectives Every sentence in Hinari has to end in either a verb or an adjective that acts like a verb. The word "(V)da" is added to the end of the stem of an adjective to create a verb-like adjective. For example, you would say "He is white." like "Nan hirada." white-is (pale) or "Nan hiranu da." white-adj-person is (Caucasian). Pronouns Demonstratives Demonstratives are treated as special adjectives that precede nouns, like Articles. They decline with Gender (Animate/Inanimate) and Case. Personal Pronouns Lexicon Example text